Together, We SEIZE an equitable future for the people and the planet!
We educate. We organize.
We incubate worker-led organizations.
For a just, democratic, and social solidarity economy.
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We strategically incubate organizations that are leading the transition to a new economy—helping organizers, activists and entrepreneurs build a strong foundation for a transformative movement.
This is the economy that our movement imagines:
How do we all build this economy? Our strategy is grounded in three pillars:
01
Organize
We develop and mobilize networks to push forward a democratic economy that aligns us with the need for human solidarity and ecological vitality.
02
Educate
We help collective entrepreneurs and community organizers access the skills and strategies they need to be engaged in the social solidarity economy.
03
Incubate
We support a network of non-profit’s and cooperative enterprises (and emerging projects) in strategic sectors—accelerating the transition to a more people and planet centric economy.
What makes us think we can actually make this new economy a reality?
Well, we’re local actors within a global movement and we’re already co-creating this reality.
Globally, it’s a movement that trades in trillions of dollars annually, and employs 280 million people.
An incubator is essentially a business accelerator, meaning an organization that takes in groups of people with the ambition to create new businesses/organizations, and gives them training, mentorship, networks, funding, and the support they need to reach success. This business accelerator model is commonly utilized and practiced within the traditional for-profit capitalist owned economy, but to help level the playing field SEIZE only focuses on giving a leg up to SSE entrepreneurs and organizers. Our research on university based entrepreneurship incubation services shows that there is no organization within Canada utilizing this approach to support the transition to a democratic economy.
Collective entrepreneurship is the very heart of the social solidarity economy – ordinary people organizing to meet their needs while creating community capital and sometimes even building personal equity. We define entrepreneurship as the creation of value and the creative act of meeting the needs of people by organizing production and distribution. Anything involving the production of goods or services can be community owned and democratically governed and we help build the collective capacity necessary to do so.